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Plumbing CompaniesHow to increase your bottom line

Managing a plumbing business can be time consuming and costly.

As well as keeping up with increased competition in the marketplace, you face a range of unpredictable, ongoing and uncontrollable factors – particularly when it comes to your staff, and how they use company assets – like your vans.

For instance, if one of your staff members is on-site cleaning drains or repairing bathrooms, how do you know they’re not sitting in your company van for an hour over lunch with the engine running, wasting fuel (that you’re paying for!)?

Or, if you have sent someone out to do a quick shower repair, or to fix some old kitchen plumbing, can you be confident that they won’t round up their hours when submitting their handwritten timesheet?

Even a seemingly simple job can end up costing you far more than it needs to if your employee drives aggressively on the way to and from the job, takes the wrong route, or uses your company van to run a personal errand on their way home.

The costs associated with running a fleet of vans can quickly add up, and can cause significant damage to your bottom line.

However, with the right vehicle management system in place, you can reduce your fuel costs, reduce your labour costs, stop your staff from wasting fuel, and reduce the amount of money coming out of your pocket.

Introduction

Think about this… Your plumber starts work late on Tuesday morning. On Wednesday afternoon, they finish work earlier than they should. But…when they submit their handwritten time sheet, it shows a normal start time for Tuesday and a normal finish time for Wednesday. They’re not being truthful about their start and finish times!

You only bill your customers for hours that are true – and it should be the same with your staff – only paying for hours worked that are true.

If you use manual timesheets to record your plumbers’ hours, how do you know with absolute certainty that the hours they’re submitting are accurate?

If their timesheets aren’t entirely accurate – even if it’s just by small increments – you’re simply giving away money that should be going into your own pocket.

Essentially, your profit is tied to an honour system with your staff – and any slight deviations in time never really work in your favour.

Plumbers rounding up their hours on a regular basis can mean significant extra costs for you. Even an extra 15 minutes, here and there, across an entire fleet, can really take its toll on your bottom line.

Without an accurate and reliable employee tracking software in place, the full scope of your payroll is – to some extent – in your plumbers’ hands. It’s simply not worth exposing your business – and your profit – to this level of financial risk.

Verizon Connect Reveal’s time card reporting feature can help you verify start times, finish times and what staff did in between the day. This means you can eliminate time sheet abuse and start reducing your labour costs.

Stop paying for hours not worked

Think about this… Your plumber takes your company van home at nights and on the weekends. They are home and need to run some errands. Your company van and their personal car are both sitting on the driveway. Which vehicle do you want them to use?

Do your plumbers use your company vans – and your company fuel – to run errands after hours? How much company fuel (which you are paying for!) are they wasting on personal trips? How much wear and tear are they adding?

If one of your staff members has their company van and personal car sitting in the driveway after

hours, it can be all-too-easy to choose the company van (and company fuel) for an outing – instead of their personal car.

As a fleet owner, fuel can be an enormous and ever fluctuating cost, and one that’s hard to control – let alone predict.

Without GPS tracking in each of your vans, there’s simply no way for you to know if one of your plumbers is using your company vehicle after hours – or

even over a weekend – and then expecting you to pay for the fuel.

Verizon Connect Reveal can make a significant difference to your bottom line, by alerting and notifying you, in real time, when your vans are used for personal use.

This means you can eliminate unauthorised vehicle use, save money on fuel, and start cutting your costs right away.

Eliminate unauthorised vehicle use

Think about this… Your plumber fills up their personal car with a full tank of fuel. They open their wallet to pay for the fuel and pull out your company fuel card. Do you really want them to use your company fuel card to purchase the fuel for their personal car?

Fuel cards can be a very convenient and easy way to manage your plumbing fleet’s fuel purchases. However, with no ability to accurately verify fuel transactions against company vans, there is potential for abuse.

Fuel cards can be a very convenient and easy way to manage your plumbing fleet’s fuel purchases. However, with no ability to accurately verify fuel

transactions against company vans, there is potential for abuse.

While you may trust your individual plumbers, in reality, you have very little knowledge about which vehicle the fuel was purchased for. You hope it was for your company van. But you don’t know if the fuel purchased was actually pumped into a personal vehicle.

Fuel card abuse is this easy. Your employee fills up their personal car with a full tank of fuel, opens his wallet at the register, pulls

out your company fuel card, and simply hands it over!

Regrettably, fuel theft and fuel card abuse does happen – and it happens often.

Verizon Connect Reveal’s fuel card integration can eliminate fuel card abuse. You can identify if the fuel pumped into the vehicle exceeded the tank of the assigned vehicle, or even if the company vehicle wasn’t at the pump at the time the fuel card was used.

Stop fuel card abuse

Think about this… The company van is parked on the kerb. During your plumbers lunch break, they sit in the company van and eat their lunch. The engine is running. The radio is playing. The air-con is on full blast! Your fuel is being wasted on needless idling.

Do you know how well (or how poorly) your individual plumbers drive on the roads?

Do you also know that your plumbers’ poor driving habits – such as excessive idling and speeding – all waste significant amounts of fuel?

For example, your plumbers may sit in the van with the engine running and the air-conditioner running during their lunch break, or they may have their engine and radio on while parked on the side of the road, simply to pass time. All of this wastes the valuable fuel that you, as a business owner, are paying for.

The extra fuel required by wasted engine running time, poor driving, and the excess wear and tear on your vehicles, very quickly adds up.

However, with Verizon Connect Reveal you can get real time alerts and notifications when these incidents occur. This means you can keep track of how well your vans are being driven, and eliminate fuel-wasting behaviour.

Eliminate fuel wasting driver behaviour

How Verizon Connect Reveal can helpThe vehicle management system can help reduce your fuel costs by eliminating personal use of company vehicles, stopping fuel card abuse and reducing fuel wasting driver behaviour. Further, stop paying for hours not worked with Verizon Connect Reveal’s time card reporting feature, verifying start and finish times.

To learn more about how Verizon Connect Reveal can reduce costs for your plumbing company, call 0800 975 4566 or visit www.verizonconnect.com/uk

www.verizonconnect.com/uk 0800 975 4566 ©2018 Verizon. All rights reserved.